


Between Light and Nowhere

by ProphecyGirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Coma, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Medical Conditions, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:05:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProphecyGirl/pseuds/ProphecyGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith never woke up from her coma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Oh I'm scared of the middle place_

_Between light and nowhere_

_I don't want to be the one_

_Left in there, left in there_

-       _Avicii, "Hope There's Someone"_

 

** Prologue **

**[Sunnydale, 2000]**

_Words they come and memories all repeat_  
_I lift your head while they change the hospital sheets_  
_And I would never lie to you, no_  
_I would never lie to you, no_  
_I felt you long after we were through, we were through_  
_The plans I make still have you in them_  
_Cause you come swimming into view_  
_And I'm hanging on your words, like I always used to do_  
_The words they use so lightly, I only feel for you_  
_I only know because I carry you around_  
_In the background_  
_\- Third Eye Blind, "The Background"_

Her hand was cold. Not like ice; nothing so sharp and angular as that. Despite the bones showing through her pale flesh and her jaundiced, sunken face, her hands were still soft in their cool translucence. Like someone had pumped out her blood and replaced it with ice water. I sat quietly, my hand in hers, and wished as I always did for a twitch. One single jerk. The doctors said they were just muscular contractions; her body fighting atrophy. But they didn't know Faith like I did. Somewhere inside this shrinking shell of a body, Faith was buried and trying to claw her way out; I knew this with the same certainty that I knew the sky was blue or the grass was green.

The room was cold, too, and the air thick with the smell of antiseptic. Usually the hospital was bustling with noises and beeping machines, but down here in this.. basement, this _dungeon_ , it was as silent as always. I tried not to think too much about the machine that should have been singing angrily as I watched the flat line zip across the screen. A few electrodes dangled from the neck of her gown, and it struck me that if I couldn't see her chest rising and falling slowly, if she really were dead.. nobody would even notice.

I watched the clear tubing push a milky fluid into her stomach, feeding her, and wondered if she wouldn't have been better off dead at this point. Left down here to rot. What was the point? But probably that was my own guilt talking, because part of me was terrified that she _would_ wake up, and she would see what I did to her, and she would hate me even more, and I wouldn't know what to do. I'd stabbed her, sure, but she jumped off that rooftop. I didn't push her. I couldn't have pushed her. I couldn't have fed her to Angel either, and that was clear to me the moment I stepped into her apartment. I was all hat and no cattle, and that was the worst part of it all. I didn't go after her to save Angel, not really. I went after her because I was angry, because I wanted her to face her failures and just _stop it_ , like an undisciplined child. In my dreams, that's what I always said to her. _Please stop it, Faith. Just stop._ Maybe if I'd listened to her instead of scolding her..

 _This is your fault_ , the voice in my head said _. **You** did this to her. You trapped her in a lifeless body and left her here to be abandoned by everyone. After all those promises you made, you left her trapped in a basement where nobody cares if her lines clog or her bags burst. She's in a coma, so what does it matter if she's covered in her own piss, right? Poor Faith, abandoned by everyone. And you made all those promises.._

"I didn't abandon you," I whisper quietly, because that voice in my head always belongs to her, it's always her blaming me. "I'm right here." But I can't even tell if I'm trying to convince her or myself. Sure, I'm here holding her hand, but what's it worth if I can only be around her while she's unconscious?

Nobody knew I was here; nobody knew where I disappeared to. Nobody asked, though, so maybe they did know. Maybe they suspected.

Angel probably knew.

He had that incredibly annoying habit of knowing everything I was feeling before I even knew I was feeling it, even from LA. Just like he'd known, looking into my eyes as he died from the poison coursing through his dead veins, that I would do what I had to, to save him, but that I didn’t want to do it. That it was more from obligation than anything else. After all, I had really been the one responsible for the monster Faith had turned into. I had been the one responsible for her jealousy of the vampire that, she felt, was the only reason she was _the other woman_.

I was responsible for both of their pain, and as I'd watched Faith's body ( _there was so much blood, how could anyone survive that much blood loss, does this even count as surviving?_ ) free-fall through the air and land with a series of sickening cracks into the truck bed below, I knew I couldn't save her. With that guilt heavy on my conscience, I'd beaten Angel with anger coursing through my veins until he was helpless to stop himself. I often wondered whether my rage was palatable—whether Angel could taste my anger and self-hatred flowing over his tongue. Whether he knew how much I hated him in that moment even though it was _her_ that made me choose between them. Whether it bothered him that I had given him my life out of obligation. Whether he could taste her in my blood, too.

But that’s Buffy in a nutshell, isn’t it? Do the right thing. The responsible thing. He loved me; he always loved me. Something in me responded to him and loved him back in the best way I knew how, but it was never like it was with Faith. I never felt that electricity, the static that sparked between us. Everything with Faith felt _good_ and it was so different from the sadness that saturated and ruined everything that existed between me and Angel.

Even sitting there, holding her icy and unresponsive hand, I felt the warmth of our connection.

It was stupid. We would never have a life together, we would never be a couple and go to the movies and ice skate and give each other massages after a long day. Ironically, in this position Faith would probably outlive me by years. I hoped she wouldn’t, though. Because once I was gone, she really would be alone.

I thought of us a lot; dancing at the Bronze, helping her with her GED, going to college together. Stupid school girl dreams. I couldn’t explain it, but even after everything that happened I wanted to be with her. And part of me was angry with her for ruining that. The rest of me was angry with myself. If I had taken her hand like this sooner; if I had said something in the alley that night. If I had just been there for her and let her know, then maybe things would have been different. Instead of asking her why she betrayed me, why she went to the mayor, I should have asked why I betrayed her; why I let her go.

The regret overcame me like it always does and I released her hand, standing up. In my head, her eyes stared up at me accusingly from underneath darkened lids. _Leaving already? Can’t handle it? Pussy._

“I have things I need to do,” I whispered lamely.

_Yeah, whatever B. Just leave me here like you always do. It should be **you** in this bed. You wanted to save Angel, you should have done it; not tried to feed me to him like I was just a slab of meat. Throw me to the wolves, no problem._

“I can’t keep having this fight with you.”

_It’s not me. I’m practically dead, B. I’m not arguing with anyone anymore. You keep arguin’ with an unconscious person, though, and they might chain you to the bed next to me. Pump you full of Thorazine and drug that crazy right out of ya._

I swallowed hard, looking at her, but she lay still as ever. I touched the back of her hand lightly, hoping one last time for one of those rare defiant twitches, but there was no reaction. She was gone; gone from everywhere and everyone. It was just me left. She had machines feeding her and going to the bathroom for her and staving off atrophy for her. I was the only one with a heartbeat who cared anymore, who appreciated that her heart was still beating too.

With those thoughts swimming in my head, I shouldered my purse and walked back upstairs to my mother's room. I curled up against Dawn in the recliner and, with my forehead pressed against the back of her head, I slept fitfully and dreamed of my mother, Faith, and cousin Celia. Their ghosts springing from their hospital beds and circling me, their voices listing the many ways I'd failed them.


	2. Chapter 1

_Oh I'm scared of the middle place_

_Between light and nowhere_

_I don't want to be the one_

_Left in there, left in there_

-       _Avicii, "Hope There's Someone"_

** Chapter I **

**[Sunnydale, 2003]**

It had been easier than I thought it would be; easier than it should have been, to make off with a wanted felon in a coma. Though I guess 'wanted' is a relative term, considering.

The knife concealed at my waist pressed into my skin with each step, and the icy steel against my hip felt reassuring. I walked slowly at the front and Kennedy brought up the rear. In between, Amanda, Vi, Shannon, Chloe, Molly, and Rona walked three on either side of the hospital bed that rolled between them. A funeral procession, I thought as I felt a weight in the pit of my stomach.

The frail girl on the bed looked nothing like the untamed wild-child that still haunted my dreams every night. Her translucent skin stretched over sharp-edged bones, and her face had a jaundiced pallor. Her hair was thick with mats and tangles; her lips so cracked and dry that I couldn't help but keep wetting my own sympathetically.

The last of the staff and patients of the hospital had evacuated days ago; there was no one left breathing in the building besides her. My stomach clenched as the voice in my head— _hers, it was always hers_ —took on that syrupy sweet and simultaneously nasty tone that I knew all too well.

_Look what you did._

I tried to push the mental images away. I was about to go to war, and being haunted by images of the numerous wires and tubes coming out of her wasn't going to help anything. But, as usual, I didn't know how to stop thinking about her.

"Oh, fuck!"

I spun around at Kennedy's voice and the foot of the bed rolled into my thighs hard enough to bruise, but I barely flinched. Kennedy was standing a few inches away from the bed on one side, and my eyes darted from the large wet spot across her shirt to the puddle on the floor to the burst catheter bag and the rapidly-spreading pool across the blanket that covered Faith's legs.

I felt my face pale as the smell of urine hit my nose, and as I looked at the bag that hadn't been emptied in days and had chosen this particular moment to give out around the seams, and I felt bile rising in my throat and guilt crushing me.

Kennedy didn't say anything else and when I finally glanced at her face I expected to see disgust, but her face was twisted in a combination of fear, anger, and sadness. I didn't understand until later, when it hit me how much of a body blow this experience was for them. If this could be the fate of a 'real' Slayer, how good could their own future possibly look?

I froze up and the others looked around helplessly, not knowing what to do. And then Chloe—sweet, innocent Chloe in her Tigger shirt with a ribbon tied in her hair—quietly left our cadre and headed into one of the abandoned hospital rooms. Amanda silently followed her and while I stood rooted to the ground, the girls got to work, with Chloe supervising.

I managed to pull myself together in time to help lift Faith's listless body, cradling her head carefully as Kennedy pulled the soiled sheets out from under her. A fresh sheet, a waterproof pad under her hips. The girls averted their eyes respectfully as I took the wipes and gently cleaned her, biting the inside of my lip to keep my feelings from escaping.

Chloe donned a pair of gloves and, bewildered, we watched as she hooked and unhooked various things, pointing Amanda and Shannon into the cabinets and drawers in search of various supplies. It was a whirlwind for a few minutes, and finally Faith was clean and dry, all her cyborg bits cleaned and hooked up or closed off for the moment, and a large box at the foot of the bed, stuffed full of supplies for her and for the ever-growing population of seriously injured girls back at the house.

After we had loaded her into the car, the girls dispersed and Chloe, who had been stuck riding on the floor of my mother's minivan on the way there, wedging herself between the bucket seats in the second row while the other girls argued over seating arrangements, climbed so serenely into the passenger seat beside me that none of the other girls even commented. Faith lay carefully buckled into the last row, with Kennedy and Amanda sitting guard on the floor in front of her and the other girls wedged in wherever they could find space.

I didn't have to ask. At the first red light, Chloe stared out the window and quietly told me about her sister at home, fighting off leukemia and cheerily placing Lisa Frank band aids and Pooh stickers on her own cyborg parts. She told me how she'd left the home and family and life that she loved, and her bedroom full of Winnie the Pooh posters and stuffed animals, because she had become a target for the Bringers. She didn't know how else to save her sister, she'd said. Her sister would leave anyway, probably soon, but not, she said firmly, because of her. And, she added, twisting a plastic ring on her finger, she had to go where she would be protected; she couldn't let her loving, devoted parents lose both of their daughters.

Weeks later, when I stood at the rim of the crater that had been my home, mourning the lives and the life that I had lost, I thought of Chloe. Laying broken and bleeding and undeniably _gone_ somewhere deep inside the Earth, her parents left to mourn not one, but two children. My hands were still calloused from digging her grave. Another failure. I climbed back onto the bus, numb, and silently sat beside Faith's makeshift "bed" that had replaced the last two rows of seats, and after everyone else had gone to sleep, I finally let myself hold her clammy hand and cry for what my new life had cost.


End file.
